Personality factors in dysphoria: A psychometric refinement of beck's Sociotropy-Autonomy Scale

The Sociotropy-Autonomy Scale (SAS) was developed as a means of assessing two cognitive-personality constructs postulated as vulnerability factors in depression (Beck, 1983). While studies have confirmed the validity of the SAS Sociotropy Scale, the construct validity of the Autonomy Scale has not been well supported. The present study was conducted to improve on the measurement of autonomy by generating additional items which were added to the original questionnaire. This 93-item SAS was administered to 485 undergraduates along with the Beck Depression Inventory, Beck Anxiety Inventory, PRF Affiliation and Autonomy Scales, Positive and Negative Emotionality Measures, and Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Four factors labeled Sociotropy, Solitude/Interpersonal Insensitivity, Independence, and Individualistic Achievement emerged from a principal-factor analysis of the SAS item pool. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that positive emotionality and solitude/interpersonal insensitivity were specifically related to dysphoria, while negative emotionality and sociotropy had significant associations with both anxious and depressed mood states.This research was supported by University of New Brunswick Research Grant 22–51 awarded to the first author.     

Parent and child causal attributions during clinical interviews

Attributions made by children and their parents for the cause of the child's clinical problem were monitored during assessment interviews. Results support previously observed differences obtained through questionnaires, with parents making more attributions than their children to characteristics of the child. This pattern was affected by variations in interview format. Parents and children differed in the locus of their attributions when interviewed individually, but these differences were not present when families were interviewed with both parents and children present. Implications for the methodology of attribution research with child-clinical populations are highlighted.     

Responding to indirect speech acts

Indirect speech acts, like the request Do you know the time?, have both a literal meaning, here “I ask you whether you know the time,” and an indirect meaning “I request you to tell me the time.” In this paper I outline a model of how listeners understand such speech acts and plan responses to them. The main proposals are these. The literal meaning of indirect speech acts can be intended to be taken seriously (along with the indirect meaning) or merely pro forma. In the first case listeners are expected to respond to both meanings, as in Yes, I do—it's six, but in the second case only to the indirect meaning, as in It's six. There are at least six sources of information listeners use in judging whether the literal meaning was intended seriously or pro forma, as well as whether there was intended to be any indirect meaning. These proposals were supported in five experiments in which ordinary requests for information were made by telephone of 950 local merchants.     

Effects of genetic vestibular defects on behavior related to spatial orientation and emotionality.

A large battery of behavioral tests was administered to normal mice and to mice with varying degrees of otoconial agenesis due to genes affecting vestibular development. Many significant differences were found, but a factor analysis revealed that the variance on the 11 best tests could be accounted for in terms of two underlying variables. Factor I, the more important of the two, was associated with activity, habituation, and spontaneous alternation. Factor II appeared to represent a fear of new stimuli or situations. In both cases factor scores were highly related to the degree of otoconial deficiency. One subgroup of mice with severe otoconial agenesis displayed hyperactivity and a total absence of either habituation or spontaneous alternation. In these animals, brain and body development were stunted, and the reactions to amphetamine and physostigmine were opposite to those seen in normal mice. The results support the idea that the static organs contribute importantly to spatial orientation and suggest that early-onset vestibular defects can result in profound alterations of emotionality.     

Peer tutoring among elementary students: educational benefits to the tutor

To determine whether tutoring might be academically beneficial to the tutor, this study investigated the acquisition of spelling words by three elementary students in a peer tutoring program. The experimental design allowed a simultaneous comparison of each child's gain in performance on comparable word lists on which the child tutored another child, was tutored by another child, or neither gave nor received tutoring. The children's spelling improved nearly an equivalent amount on those words on which they tutored another child as on the words on which they were tutored; no such change was noted on the words on which they neither gave nor received tutoring. These findings, that peer tutoring is profitable for the tutor as well as the tutee, provide a basis for recommending peer tutoring as one method of individualizing education.     

The “false consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes

Evidence from four studies demonstrates that social observers tend to perceive a “false consensus” with respect to the relative commonness of their own responses. A related bias was shown to exist in the observers' social inferences. Thus, raters estimated particular responses to be relatively common and relatively unrevealing concerning the actors' distinguishing personal dispositions when the responses in question were similar to the raters' own responses; responses differing from those of the rater, by contrast, were perceived to be relatively uncommon and revealing of the actor. These results were obtained both in questionnaire studies presenting subjects with hypothetical situations and choices and in authentic conflict situations. The implications of these findings for our understanding of social perception phenomena and for our analysis of the divergent perceptions of actors and observers are discussed. Finally, cognitive and perceptual mechanisms are proposed which might account for distortions in perceived consensus and for corresponding biases in social inference and attributional processes.     

The Cost-Reward Model of Helping Behavior: A Nonconfirmation1

A field experiment was designed to test several predictions derived from the Piliavin and Piliavin cost-reward model of helping behavior. Female and male subjects' reported intent to help a hemophiliac in a nearby hospital was unrelated to the costs for helping, the costs for not helping, and the order in which the subjects received the costs' manipulations. The obtained rates of helping were also unrelated to whether or not subjects reported having donated previously. Failure to obtain the predicted results is discussed.     

A comparison of the key-peck and treadle-press operants in the pigeon: differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate schedule of reinforcement

Key pecking and treadle pressing in pigeons were compared under concurrent (key-treadle) and single-operant differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate schedules of food reinforcement ranging from 5 to 60 sec (concurrent procedure) or 5 to 120 sec (single-operant procedure). Under both procedures, the two operants followed the same general law: decreasing response rate and reinforcement rate and increasing number of responses per reinforcement as a function of increasing schedule interval. High correlations were found between key pecking and treadle pressing for the measures of response rate, reinforcement rate, and responses per reinforcement. Regression equations allowed the prediction of treadle pressing from key pecking. More bursting occurred in responding to the key, and key pecking showed a more precise temporal discrimination than treadle pressing. A test for sequential dependencies between key and treadle responses showed significant dependencies not only under the concurrent procedure but also in data created artificially by merging key and treadle sequences from different pigeons under the concurrent procedure and from the same pigeon under the single-operant procedure. It seems likely that the sequential dependencies found were due to the independent action of the schedule on each operant and that behavioral dependencies did not occur with the concurrent training procedure. The key-peck operant does not appear to have any special qualities that preclude its use in discovering general laws of behavior, at least under the differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate schedule. The usefulness of the key peck in other situations requires direct experimental study.